My worst Subject

Everyone has a worst subject in school. i don't know if it's just me but i had a few worst subjects in school. i wasn't a bad student, i was an average one although my parents and teachers insisted that i have 'more potential' and i needed to work harder. in my opinion my worst subject had to be Hindi. For some reason, probably the lack of effort, i could never get my head around the language, not that the situation has improved now but still i think it is a lot better than what it was at school.

It's in the 8th standard i think is when you have to choose which language you want to take as your 2nd language, i chose hindi mostly because i had no other option. i got kicked out of the french class coz the only thing i wrote for the qualification test was "omelette du fromage" thanks to an episode of Dexter's Lab i watched the day before. so i took up hindi and scraped through the 8th standard by sheer luck, gods grace, parents prayers, my hindi teacher feeling sorry for me, whatever the reason i went into 9th my dream still alive of writing my board exams in the 10th with hindi as my second language. a year later at the end of my 9th standard we had a farewell party in school for our seniors and my hindi teacher called me aside told me that i had got single digit marks for my final exam (it was on 100!!!) but on the positive side she assured me that i could make it up by doing a re-exam.

i went back home depressed but not entirely surprised, and decided that in the next 3-4 days before my re-exam i would study and atleast pass (i had no delusions that i thought i could max the paper, even my dreams were realistic). i had a tuition teacher who was a BA student in some college, so he came home i told him about the re-exam and both of us mutually decided that it was impossible that any of the questions that came in the previous paper would be repeated so he made me study everything else (and i did :P). Exam day super confident i walk into school and i wrote the exam sitting in the staff room since i was the only one doing the test again. the answer booklet and question paper were both kept facedown i sat down turned the question paper over and.....i couldn't believe it...seriously!!!....no it can't be.....i just sank in my chair....it was the same paper as the last time around.  so what do i do, well at least i studied one of the essay's from the previous papers, 'Mera Barath Mahan' (ps. i would love to read that essay now) anyway, i attempted more than the last time around, more grammar sections n all and i thought i did a pretty decent job. i finished my paper walked out confident that i might have just managed to pull it off, and returned home.

it used to take me about an hour to get back home, once i got home my mom asked me how the paper was and i gave her my standard reply, 'it was okay', follow up question "will you pass?" , "i should". before i could finish came her reply, " well you didn't, i just got a call from school, the good thing is you've doubled your marks from the last time around" mentally i thought to myself that it meant that my marks were in double digits. once my dad reached back it was the double "we're so disappointed in you" looks. next day i went to the Principal's office with my parents and i had to sign a letter saying that if i didn't pass the first exam of hindi in the 10th standard i would be demoted back to the 9th. (i was happy the letter was not in hindi) so narrow escape and i started my 10th standard and in my mind i wanted to prove everyone wrong and do really well in hindi. well it finally happened i got a new tuition teacher (DUH!!!, it was his fault. :P) this new guy was strict, was old and he just kept screaming hindi into my ears, well it worked never failed in hindi after that. after writing my board exams i took my hindi books and went to the terrace and pured kerosene on the books and burnt it. i was overjoyed, no more hindi...EVER!!!!....NOT..

fast forward 2 years, i joined college in bombay and guess what...hindi was a compulsory paper, i attended the first lecture and it was like i had seen a ghost, 3 books of hindi, 1 filled with poems, 1 with short stories, and 1 was a novel. during the 2nd lecture i was even more stumped when the teacher read the first paragraph of a poem and gave the explanation in hindi, i was probably waiting for the subtitles to turn on in my head. i understood NOTHING...but we had a very strict attendance policy so i ensured i met the minimum requirement, didn't understand anything, maybe bits and pieces of poems and when some kind soul explained a short story to me in english. few months later exam time...

at the point i reached the examination hall i was not tense, nervous or anything, i just went into the hall, on the answer booklet one instruction just stood out, "Students are required to be in the examination hall for the first 30 minutes". i was happy, i wouldn't have to sit for the whole 2 hrs. i got the question paper i answered whatever questions i understood and 30 min's later a bell rang, i looked to the side a friend of mine also seemed to be done with his paper, just nodded and both of us walked out. once we were out of the exam hall slowly i could see the rest of my class walking out at 5 min intervals. i was happy, although i was the first person to walk out, i wasn't the only one. there was this one guy in our group who managed to carry entire pages of his book into the exam hall and he was busy copying (cheater cheater pumpkin eater) for 2 hrs.

after our holidays we got our marks, i got 5 on 50, (not bad for 30 mins) and i had the chance to make it up in the second term, wondering how much the guy who copied got?? he got 4...yes FOUR!!!

p.s. i eventually cleared the paper in my second year with no drama, i got the exact required pass mark, it's obvious my teacher felt sorry for the poor south indian boy who didn't know any hindi. :-)